The Yukio Okutsu State Veterans Home in Hilo has been cited by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for 18 deficiencies.
The deficiencies found in 2022 ranged from failures to provide pain management and prevent injuries like bedsores that resulted in infections, along with other concerns about cleanliness, safety and the comfort of residents.
In February, CMS fined the facility $129,700 but later dropped the total to $84,000 after the veterans home waived its right to an administrative hearing, reducing the fine by 35%.
“These are some bumps that we go through in our path, and we learn from it and improve,” Hilo Medical Center Director of Marketing Elena Cabatu said on behalf of the veterans home, which the hospital manages. “Corrective action plans were submitted and accepted.”
For each of the 18 deficiencies, the veteran’s home was required to submit a plan of corrective action.
“We have to have an accepted plan of correction by CMS for every tag, regardless of the level of scope and severity,” said Veterans Home Administrator Kaui Chartrand. “They then review your plan of correction, approve it, and they’ll come in for a revisit. It’s a very detailed, lengthy process, and they’ll come specifically to look at those areas.”
Corrective actions by the veterans home include tightening up on the monitoring of patients, developing auditing tools, changing the frequency of reviewing issues, and confirming tasks are completed regularly, according to Chartrand.
Additional changes include the hiring of Patricia Cleghorn-Turner, who will serve as the new director of nursing for the facility.
“We value her expertise and her experience in long-term care,” Chartrand said of Cleghorn-Turner, who officially joined the team in June.
The veterans home already is within its 90-day window for a new CMS survey, which will be conducted by the state Department of Health in the fall.
“We are continuing to work on the areas that we need to to maintain compliance so that in October, we’ll have a better outcome,” Chartrand said.
An additional survey of the facility conducted by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in June provided more positive results.
“We had a very good outcome,” Chartrand said of the VA survey, noting it resulted in just one low-level citation that impacted only one resident.
But a key concern about the facility remains staffing.
The 95-bed veterans home has only 62 beds currently filled, but a new program launching in September is expected to help recruit more certified nursing assistants for the facility.
Chartrand estimates the program will add between 10 and 15 new staff members.
“With that, we’ll be able to open up more beds,” Cabatu said. “We feel like we’ve been healing since 2020” (when the COVID-19 pandemic began).
Yukio Okutsu State Veterans Home opened in 2007, but the state took over management in January 2021 after the facility came under scrutiny for its safety protocols after a COVID outbreak in August 2020.
The inspections cited problems regarding infection-control procedures, and resulted in a $510,640 fine.
“These are issues that were addressed and were fixed,” Cabatu said. “We want to do our best to open up more beds and welcome more veterans and their families into our home.”
Email Grant Phillips at gphillips@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
